Some manufacturers provide electronic devices that use off-the-shelf third-party vendor components. Some electronic device manufacturers further offer to qualify such vendor components (e.g., test the vendor components under strict conditions) and, if the vendor components qualify, certify that the vendor components are from an “approved” vendor. An end customer who purchases an electronic device from an electronic device manufacturer and a component from an approved vendor typically receives an extra assurance from the electronic device manufacturer that the electronic device and the component will work normally when the component is properly installed and configured within the electronic device. On the other hand, an end customer who purchases an off-the-shelf component which is not from an approved vendor may receive no assurance from the electronic device manufacturer that the component will work properly within the device.
When an electronic device using components from a non-approved vendor fails, it can be difficult and expensive for the electronic device manufacturer to determine whether the failure is a result of a problem in the device itself or the components from the non-approved vendor. Accordingly, electronic device manufacturers often only agree to support device configurations which exclusively use components from an approved vendor. For device configurations that do not exclusively use components from an approved vendor, the electronic device manufacturer may not make any guarantees or may not provide any warrantees.
Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP) modules are compact, hot-pluggable transceivers used in telecommunication and data communications. They interface a network host device motherboard (for a switch, router, media converter or similar device) to a fiber optic or copper networking cable in a modular manner. In order to prevent counterfeiting of SFP modules, some manufacturers place read-only memory storing a magic code on SFP modules, allowing the network host device to read the magic code and other identifying information from the SFP and determine if the magic code was generated using a secret magic key known only to approved vendors. A similar technique is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,234,061 to Diab, et al. (2007), the teachings of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.